Abe Hertzberg wants to pull the plug on electric cars. The retired UW professor
of aeronautics and astronautics
rolls his eyes at the hype propelling these supposed vehicles of the future
because, he says, they have just as many safety and environmental problems as
gasoline-powered cars with a fraction of the performance.

Hoping to stall the electric car bandwagon, Hertzberg and his colleagues set
out to create a better alternative to grandma's gas-guzzling Gremlin. Inspired
by a Li'l Abner cartoon depicting a car that runs on smog, the UW researchers
invented a liquid nitrogen
vehicle which generates no harmful emissions. As a bonus, manufacturing the
liquid nitrogen removes pollutants from the air.

"If you're going to talk about a truly non-polluting car, you have to do
something different than gas or electric," explains Hertzberg. "We believe a
liquid nitrogen vehicle can match the performance and range of an electric car,
while still being affordable and easy to maintain and operate. And
ecologically, it's a dream come true."

The outside of the
LN2000 liquid nitrogen-powered vehicle is the body of an old Grumman Kubvan
mail truck.

The UW vehicle--dubbed LN2000--works sort of like a steam engine, except it is
powered by vaporizing very cold liquid nitrogen instead of steam from boiling
water. The nitrogen vapor turns an air motor to propel the car and then exits
the tailpipe. Since the atmosphere already is 78 percent nitrogen, the
environmental effect of driving LN2000 vehicles--even millions of them--would
be virtually undetectable, Hertzberg says.

What really excites this veteran researcher, however, is the potential of
liquid nitrogen production to actually reduce air pollution. To make liquid
nitrogen, Hertzberg explains, a plant would simply run air through a large
refrigeration system and collect the liquid nitrogen as it condenses. In the
process, pollutants such as carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide also are removed
from the air and could be disposed of in a benign manner. One option is to pump
the pollutants into depleted oil and gas wells or into the deep ocean where
they are unlikely to spread back into the atmosphere and cause environmental
havoc.

Fossil fuels would mostly likely be burned to power the refrigeration plant.
But the exhaust from these plants would be trapped for use as the feedstock for
the liquid nitrogen, so no pollutants would be released into the atmosphere.

"We are not trying to promise an environmental free lunch," cautions Professor
Adam Bruckner,
who is working with Hertzberg on the LN2000 team along with Professor Tom Mattick,
research scientist Carl Knowlen and graduate students Peter Vitt and Helene
DeParis. "We are simply trying to point out a significant potential
environmental benefit of liquid nitrogen automobile propulsion. Compared to
other supposedly green automotive propulsion systems, such as electric cars, we
think our approach looks pretty good."